Week of 10/6 - 10/10

Monday

On Monday, I worked on finishing the Inkscape design for the metal car piece that Mr. L wanted me to cut out. I had to search for a font to use for the lettering on the metal piece. The car that this metal piece is supposed to be part of is an Aston Martin DB5, which utilizes a very slender and slim font that was hard to find a replica of. However, I was able to find a few fonts that got close enough to the one found in that car. With that, I was able to make the Inkscape design of the part complete with all the words and numbers to engrave on the piece.

Tuesday

On Tuesday, I was able to cut out the metal piece on the water jet. Mr. L helped me out with this process. Water jetting the actual piece was not very difficult, as the design was really simple; it was just a few holes in the middle of a rectangle. After I cut it out, I deburred all of the rough edges on the piece. After this, I was waiting to use the laser cutter to engrave the words.

While I was waiting to use the laser cutter, I designed parts for my wooden poster. I decided to make a spinning mechanism similar to a fidget spinner to use for the stars on my poster. To do this, I designed a little test of what I thought the center of the stars should look like in order to achieve that spinning mechanism. Fidget spinners have bearings at their center that are covered by tops that the user can hold between their fingers to spin them. I designed this part to test out with a bearing to see if it would work the way I wanted to.

Wednesday

I was finally able to engrave the letters on the metal part on the laser cutter. After doing that, the part was finished, and I gave it to Mr. L to pass off to his friend. The part looked good, and Mr. L's friend liked the design. After this, I decided to cut out the bottom piece of my wooden poster in cardboard to see if I actually liked the size of it. The piece seemed way bigger than I wanted it to be, so I decided to cut it down a little bit and adjust the size in my CAD design.

Thursday

On Thursday, I was able to use the 3D printer to print out the test of the spinning part for my poster. The print was pretty brief because it was only two small parts. But the pieces were not good for the spinning mechanism that I wanted. The parts that I designed were exactly flush against the bearing, which is not good, because it did not spin at all. I looked at the design of the fidget spinner and realized that I needed to add another layer that buffers the bottom of the bearing cover from the bearing so that I can actually spin the bearing.